Leon Turnbull Photography

Eight waterfalls in two days, and ten overall on my Christmas holiday (all new waterfalls to me, except for one). Not too bad, me thinks. I was pleased. My belly was full. It was scrumptified. Not all the waterfalls were big ones, but at least half of them were really nice ones, and I think this last one was the most purdy of them all.

The last day was scheduled to be cloudy so we took a big detour through the mountains. That turned out to be a bit hair raising because it was snowing (that part was not scheduled). There was a few inches of new snow on the ground, and the highway had not been plowed. If this was British Columbia, the road would have already been plowed in the night. But this was Oregon. I was not worried about going off the road or anything, but it was just very slow going because it was not plowed. We finally arrived in Prospect in the late morning.

There are four nice waterfalls here, including two utterly spectacular ones. It is a short and pleasant hike through the forest on an icy and snowy path down to Mill Creek and Barr Creek Falls. Barr Creek is the one pictured here and it is a drop dead beautiful drop of 167 ft. (there is also an upper section of this falls that unfortunately cannot be seen very well). Again, I had to keep telling the kids to be careful near the cliff edge. Nekoda managed to clonk her hiking pole down hard onto Jadon’s head while they were standing next to the edge. Oh my gosh. It was an accident of course, but Jadon was in a lot of grief for a few minutes, and I’m just glad he handled it so well and didn’t retaliate. Bye bye Nekoda. That would not have been a happy moment. In truth, the kids get along extremely well together. If it was me and my sister Tania at that age, it really would have been bye bye Tania. I am kidding – I hope, but I did once push my sister off the counter at our house when she was a toddler. But no worries, she still loves me. Ha ha.

It is shocking that I had never been to see White River Falls before. It is only a little bit out of the way on our normal route from California to Canada. It is a magnificent waterfall. You would think I would been here before now. The waterfall madman missing out on such a beauty? I have no excuses. But all is remedied now.

We had a good week in Canada visiting family. The kids got in a couple days of skiing at Red Mountain (the best ski hill in the world – of course I am biased). I rested my back all week and did not ski this year (that would have really killed off my back for sure), so I am pretty much all ready for El Nino now and for more hiking.

Speaking of El Nino, the El Nino storms have finally started in California. We finished December with a slightly above average snow pack (107% in the Central Sierra, and about 100% in the North) and slightly above average rainfall. The media was reporting 136% snow pack thus far; That is quite wrong and I am not sure where they got those figures from (did they just take one reading at one location in all of California? or did they just make it up?). So far in January, we are just seeing very weak storms, and there is nothing much better in the long range forecast; but we continue to pray we will see a lot of rain and snow for the rest of the winter.

Anyway it was a very cold day as we drove down from Canada. We got out of the car at Spokane and I nearly froze to death before I took five steps. I got back in the car and made the kids go in to get my coffee. Just kiddin.

We made good time and arrived at White River Falls State Park in the afternoon. It was a cloudy day (which is good, it was supposed to be sunny). The park was closed, and that meant we had to walk in from the road. I had promised the kids it would only be a half mile hike, but this added another half mile or so. Oops. Did I mention that it was a very cold day? Despite the closure, there were a lot of people there. It is a popular location and I expected some people there, but not quite so many. Well, we made it to the overlook, no one else was there at the moment, so I setup my camera and started taking photos. I was antsy and nervous because the kids were fooling around, playing near the cliff. I kept telling them to stay back from the edge. I suppose they were not really being unsafe, but I was being an over protective father, and Nekoda had already slipped twice on the ice that day (and according to her, broke both her knees). Speaking of being unsafe, I saw one person down below that had climbed up on the ice above the river edge to get up close to the waterfall. If he had slipped on that ice, he would have been in the river. I saw some other people that had climbed down the cliff from the overlook to get closer. That also seemed a bit much on the “too dangerous” side of things. The overlook is safe and it has a better view. Why kill yourself?

White River Falls is a drop dead gorgeous waterfall. Officially, actually two waterfalls. The lower one is called Celestial Falls (31 ft. high), the upper one is called White River Falls (79 ft. high). There is a third smaller waterfall as well, which we also went down to see. I am definitely glad we took the time to come here, even though all our body parts took a couple hours to thaw out once we got back to the car.

Because of my back I was not sure we were going to get to go on our Christmas vacation to Canada this year. On Monday of Christmas week my back hurt so much I did not go to work and I was laid up in bed all day. On Tuesday I hobbled into work, and hobbled is the key word. It was extremely uncomfortable driving. But Wednesday and Thursday the back improved immensely, and I was able to drive up to the in-laws in northern CA after work on Thursday. So at the last minute on Christmas day, I decided that we would go to Canada. My wife was not able to come this time, so it was me and the kids only, and it was me that had to drive the entire trip, all 900 miles of it. The back was quite sore after the first long day of driving, but it got much better after that.

The roads were quite icy most of the trip, especially driving through Oregon and Washington. The low temperature we encountered was -14°F, somewhere near Mount Shasta. We did not get out of the car to test it (it was even colder on the return trip). The second day was cloudy and overcast, perfect for waterfalling and I had plans to make some stops on the way up to Canada. We did not drive through Spokane as we usually do, but instead drove up Highway 213 North. That highway was particularly bad for driving, and thus quite slow going.

So finally, way out in the middle of nowhere land, we arrived at Chamokane Falls, which I have never been to before (mostly because it is way out in the middle of nowhere land). There was a lot of snow and I did not want to get stuck way out here where no one would find us for a couple months, so we hiked down the last part of the road to the falls. Along the way, we encountered a large splotch of blood in the snow. It was a very big splotch. Human? Animal? Sasquatch? I suppose it was an animal, I would guess a deer that was shot, but who knows. We got to the falls without further incident. Plumb indicates in his book that this waterfall is 25 to 35 feet high, but I only found this small 13 foot waterfall. It was pretty yes, but still disappointing. I did not have proper maps with me, and I was not positive about the waterfall location. In fact, I was so sure the waterfall should be bigger than this, that I looked around trying to find another bigger one. Much to the chagrin of my children, I went much further upstream trying to locate another waterfall. But alas, there was no other. This was it. How Plumb could think this was 25 feet high is a mystery to me, but I suppose if you included the lower small cascade, it would be 20 ft. high.

Ah well, onto the next one. We did make one more stop on the way at Douglas Falls in Colville but it was so late and getting dark so that was all we could do. We arrived in Canada after dark, my back was still intact, and my mom had her specialty lasagna dinner on the table just waiting for us. Sweet.

I took Monday off work to go hiking after the latest storm. Now I’ll probably have to take more days off work. And it won’t be for hiking.

I went up to Hwy 70 north of Oroville with big ideas in my head. Those waterfalls should be flowing nicely after the rain, ya think? Well so I was actually going to go on a bike ride first off, but there was a big huge rock in the middle of the road, and I was not able to drive as far as I wanted to, and then I had troubles getting my bike ready to go, so by the time I was ready it was getting very late and I decided I did not want to go on a much longer bike ride now, so I decided to skip it and go to a different location.

This hike was supposed to be very easy and short, so I did not bother to transfer my camera gear to my normal and proper backpack from the backpack that I would use for biking. I did not think it mattered. Big mistake. It was not such a short and easy hike. Indeed, it was incredibly steep, and I ended up climbing a mountain that was steep and quite icy. It soon became clear this was not going to work out, and I decided to turn around to try a different path. One missed step on the way down, and there goes my back. Ooh the pain. I am sure that this would not have happened if I had been wearing my proper backpack, which had proper support for my back. So there I was laying down on the side of a mountain in pain, in the middle of poison oak, and unable to get up. Ten minutes later, I figured I should do something to get off this mountain. I stood up, gingerly, slowly. I was on my feet. I still had to get down. I could not wear the backpack, so I dragged it down the mountain, through the poison oak, and slowly made progress, finally getting back to the car. It must have been a miracle that I was able to get down.

Okay so I still had a long drive home, and so far no waterfalls to show for it. I was able to walk a bit still, so I went to two roadside waterfalls, then I went to this one: Bear Ranch Creek Falls. It is an easy half mile hike to this waterfall, but it was tough for me with my back in so much pain, and by the time I got back to the car I was quite worn out. I probably should not have done that little hike, but I am glad I did because it would have been such a waste to drive all the way out there and have nothing to show for it. Of course I stopped at Jakes in Oroville for lunch on the way back and after that it was a very long and uncomfortable drive home.

So what now? I am definitely going to be out of commission for awhile. And I see now there is a lot of rain in the forecast through Christmas. You can thank me for that, since I will be in bed at home and not able to go out and enjoy it.

I did not get to anything new on this day, but it was a fun day to play in the snow.

Actually, I was hoping to get to one new waterfall but as soon as I arrived I knew it would be impossible. There was too much snow on the ground, the waterfall would be completely covered, but I knew Rattlesnake Creek would be flowing.

There was about 9-10 inches of snow on the ground at Cisco Grove. That was a bit less than expected from the last storm, but still too much to hike in. Unless you have snowshoes, which of course I did, and which of course I used. I trudged through the snow for a half mile, without too much difficulty, but it was tough sledding. After that, I came across snowmobile tracks from the previous day, going up the mountain. That made things a lot easier for me to just walk in the already laid out tracks. How far would they go? Not far enough, apparently. The snowmobiles had turned around about a half mile from the Middle Falls, and so I continued trudging on through the almost but not quite one foot of snow. I arrived at the Middle Falls, and it looked pretty, but how to get up close to it? That was definitely a challenge, but a fun challenge. I got off the main road, and worked my way over to the creek. It was much deeper snow through here, and I had to descend a steep bank, over a few logs, cross a mini creek, over some more logs, not knowing what exactly is under my feet (in other words, am I going to fall through and into the freezing cold and deep creek?), carefully, ever so carefully, and finally I arrived at the base of the Middle Falls. I got out my camera, had to climb over some more logs, this time I could see the huge hole under my feet, but I kept my snowshoes placed carefully on secure logs (I hope they are secure!) in order to not fall through into the freezing creek (and henceforth die), then finally got in front of the falls, I set up my tripod, planting it through the snow and into the creek, while I sat down on a snow covered rock, with my snowshoes still securely planted on the logs. Does that sound like an adventure to you?

Anyhow, all that done, I turned around and did everything in reverse, finally getting back to the main road in one piece. I decided to skip the upper falls, as that would have been a heckuva lot more effort, another four miles of snow hiking. I still had time to get back to the Lower Falls before it got in sun, so that’s what I did, making it down there just in time. With the increased amount of snow, I found it a lot harder to get up close to the Lower Falls, and even had to (literally) climb straight up the lower cascade in the creek, in order to get up to it this time. That was rather hair raising. I also fell through a huge hole climbing down to the creek. As I fell, my mind was racing, wondering just how far I was going to fall through, and if I would ever see the light of day again. I only fell through to my waist and no injuries, but I suppose it could have been worse. I will share that photo later.

The storms we have had this year so far, including these last two big ones, are still not El Nino related. The storms this year so far have been pounding the Pacific NW, and California has just been getting the last remnants of their stuffings. As usual, that always seems to be the case for us. We are still well below average for the year thus far. In an El Nino pattern, the Pacific NW will be dry, and southern California will be hit hard. I am still anxiously waiting for us to get into that El Nino storm pattern, but now it looks like that may not happen until mid January, which is very late for such a strong El Nino. Sigh. I saw one news article saying that El Nino is destroying the Polar Vortex this year. It is true that the Polar Vortex is nowhere to be seen in the east this year, and the east has been very dry thus far, but I am not sure that El Nino has anything to do with it. Nonetheless, for all you easterners, I say too bad so sad. You have had four good years in a row, while we have been suffering in a horrendous drought. It is our turn this year, so deal with it (and hopefully, much more than just one year too). Can I hear an Amen?